Grosses Festspielhaus
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| Image: © Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli |
Jörg Widmann – Con brio
Mozart – Piano Concerto no.27
in B-flat major, KV 595Wagner - Tannhäuser: Overture
Götterdämmerung: ‘Dawn’ and ‘Siegfried’s Rhine Journey’
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Prelude to Act One
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (piano/conductor)
Another day, another cancellation
by Martha Argerich, who was supposed to have performed Liszt’s First Piano
Concerto here with Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
Barenboim, whom I cannot remember having cancelled a single appearance, stepped
in and offered Mozart’s final piano concerto instead. It was not the finest
performance I have heard from him, nor from the WEDO, but it was still very
good, and all the more welcome in the circumstances. If the first movement was
slightly ragged at times, it was always clear where it was heading. Barenboim’s
basic tempo – not initially settled upon – was spot on, capable of infinite
modification according to the progress of the music. There was admirable
clarity throughout, the performance really hitting its stride in the
development section. The WEDO’s woodwind section proved especially delightful
here and thereafter, its principal bassoonist heart-breaking in that solo line, likewise its principal
flautist in response. Intimacy of mood and consequentiality of phrases were the
hallmark of the slow movement, possessed of an air that was rare enough, but
not so autumnal as many: this was more the world of an outdoor Salzburg
serenade, fondly recalled by Mozart in Vienna. It was gloriously unhurried,
though. Ornamentation was always convincing, always delightful. The finale was
equally rare of mood, its knife-edge demands perfectly captured from the
opening solo onwards. The occasional piano slip did not bother me in the
slightest, but might, I suppose, have disconcerted some. The cadenza had
Beethovenian purpose, but the closing bars were imbued with Mozartian grace and
chiaroscuro.
Prior to that, we had heard an
excellent performance of Jörg Widmann’s Con
brio Overture, commissioned by Mariss Jansons and
the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra to accompany Beethoven’s Seventh and
Eighth Symphonies. There is throughout – and was, I think, still more so in
this particular performance – a strong and yet elusive sense of Beethovenian
presence, from the opening timpani solo and orchestral éclat onwards. I found
Barenboim’s performance livelier, more at home with Beethovenian allusion than
the performance I have heard from Jansons. It dreamed, rather than experiencing
nightmares, even when sounding closer to Mahler: a thoroughly upbeat – in more
than one sense – opening to the concert.
The second half was
devoted to Wagner. I am not the greatest fan of ‘bleeding chunks’, but with a
conductor and orchestra such as this am unlikely to protest too strongly. The Tannhäuser Overture benefited from a
deliciously woody opening, responded to by impressively dark-toned, contrasting
strings. Barenboim took it faster, I think, than I have heard him do so in the theatre;
as a stand-alone piece, it deserves different treatment (which may, of course,
take very different forms). It was, in any case, a reading full of contrast,
especially dynamic contrast, and – something that struck me in all the
performances to follow – quite expertly shaped, so much so that one barely
noticed it was being shaped. The final peroration was glorious by any
standards.
The Götterdämmerung excerpts opened with ‘Dawn’:
fatal, duly ambiguous. Tragedy was foretold, yet there seemed some sense of
hope too. To cut to the end of the scene and the transition to ‘Siegfried’s
Rhine Journey’ will always, I suspect, sound odd to me, but Barenboim did what
he could with such foreshortening. The intrepid quality ensuing seemed not only
to relate to the Volsung hero but to an anthropomorphised version of the mighty
Rhine itself. As we reached the Gibichung gates, dark, Nibelung (or
part-Nibelung) brass invited us in; despite ourselves, we felt drawn. Then we
skipped to the shattering climax – here, Karajan-like in its brutality, the
brutality of rape – to the first act. Fearful symmetry was to be experienced in
the reappearance of trombones in the opening to the Funeral March. But now,
there was no hope, just remembrance. The falling back into night seemed to look
forward to Strauss’s Alpine Symphony (a
work I should love to hear performed by these musicians).
Finally, at least
so far as the advertised programme was concerned, we heard the ultimate pick-me-up,
following Siegfried’s death: the Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger. It was gloriously full of tone, never lingering,
but nor was it hard-driven. As two encores, we heard the Prelude to Act III: dark,
noble, almost Elgarian, and with the greatest contrast of light, which would
yet not be unalloyed for long. I guessed correctly that it would be followed by
the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin.
Barenboim trusted his musicians, often barely conducting them. It was a bravura
performance, but never just a bravura performance.
